


that thou wouldst withhold not even thy soul from me

by onlybylaura



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Light Angst, Post HtN, Slight Harrow spoilers, full lyctorhood because we can dream, harrow admits to opening gideon's mail but for research purposes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 22:14:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29357805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onlybylaura/pseuds/onlybylaura
Summary: The first post-full lyctorhood conversation.Or, Gideon Nav would like to understand what the fuck is wrong with Harrowhark Nonagesimus.(Just. So Many Things.)
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 4
Kudos: 75





	that thou wouldst withhold not even thy soul from me

The first thing Harrowhark criticized when they were alone after completing the process was the choice of magazine Gideon had left behind in the stupid tomb Harrow had locked her in, and then subsequently decided to lock _herself_ ins while Gideon took her body out for a spin.

“I can’t believe it’s the only thing your brain was capable of conjuring,” Harrow said, getting up with such ease that Gideon could only marvel. Only it wasn’t easy — Gideon could see the bones clicking in places, the bone cage that had sustained Harrow’s back while she walked, and her pretending it was just another simple process.

As if Full Lyctorhood had just been another box to tick in her daily schedule.

She had always been such an arrogant little ass.

“I was under duress,” Gideon muttered. “It’s not like I had a lot of space or time to decide what I was taking with me in an afterlife stuck inside your stupid body.”

Her body didn’t feel like her own. It was her own, of course, they’d just finished sticking the souls back into place and the bones where they should be and all that thanergy wherever it went; Gideon really didn’t bother paying attention to the whole necromancer deal when Palamedes was explaining it to her. Lyctorhood was complicated, necromantic arts were complex, yadda yadda yadda. She should have, of course, but she just wanted to get it over with. Bring Harrowhark back so she could finally punch her in the face without hurting herself.

“It’s not even a real publication,” Harrow replied, looking very pissed off.

“And how the hell do you know that?” Gideon asked, trying to get a rise out of her, because Harrowhark Nonagesimus being a little bitch was better than her being cold corpse, and Gideon would rather fight than submit. “Wait. Nonagesimus, did you open my _mail_?”

“There needed to be a verification system in case you were ordering bombs. Crux could have done it, but I thought to spare the Marshal of the more abhorrent contents.”

“So you could have a look.”

“Shut up, Nav. It was concerning the safety and well-being of my House. I am its scion, I am its protector. I was being thorough. It was for research purposes.”

When she looked back, Gideon was faced with those bright golden eyes. She blinked, reaching towards her face, turning around to the reflective surface of the plex to see dark eyes of her own. They looked too black for her. Too dark.

The Lyctor process was complete, but she felt like utter shit.

Harrowhark was distractedly fingering all of the bone studs in her ears to make sure they were still there. Gideon had wanted to take them out, they were prickly as hell, but taking out Harrow’s bones, the bones Harrow had created when she was still in that body, meant she was discarding something of Harrow’s and she didn’t even know if she could get it back.

Now Harrow was standing in front of her, black-clad, bones, her face bare because _fuck you_ _Gideon wasn’t painting herself if Harrow didn’t make her_ , and Gideon kind of hoping that maybe that would have finally gotten a rise out of her and she’d eat Gideon alive. None of that happened. It was easier reverting the process, completing it in whatever fucked up necromancer way it had to be, and now that Harrow was standing in front of her being _Harrow_ she couldn’t even muster enough strength to kick the living daylights out of her ass.

“Can we talk about this?” Gideon asked. There was still so much to do. So much left. She could imagine Palamedes barging in back at any moment with the most horrible news. Cohort ships had arrived. The Sixths had been swallowed by the sun. God decided to make an appearance in person and submit them to dad jokes, which Gideon wouldn’t have particularly minded, but then again, God was her dad, and an ass, and he’d fucked all of this up. But all of that had to wait, and it had to wait for this. For this one moment. “Don’t—don’t pretend it’s that easy. You were hibernating inside your own body.”

“And?” Harrow asked, as if she was waiting for a brilliant conclusion from Gideon, who didn’t really have any. 

“Don’t _and_ me, I was saddling up in that body of yours until we could get this over with,” Gideon said. “Why didn’t you do it? Why didn’t you finish it, Harrow?”

Gideon’s eyes darkened. Harrow’s now, really. Golden becoming amber. Her face scrunched up in such a way that even after months being in Harrow’s body Gideon had never managed to get to an expression that was so inherently Ninth in loathing.

“The Lyctoral process is an ugly thing,” Harrow said. “Believe me, I wouldn’t have agreed to this otherwise.”

“You didn’t have to agree,” Gideon said, more forcefully, trying not to get overwhelmed by all the waves of curse words coming to her mind when she looked at the necromancer. _Fuck you_ didn’t really encompass all of it. She wanted to kick Harrow’s ass and beat her face, and then maybe after—maybe after she could? what? Gideon didn’t even fucking know. The universe had been tilting of late, and things weren’t straight, especially her. “My job was to save you.”

“I didn’t need saving. I never even wanted it.”

Of course she was going to act this way. Complete the process, Gideon back in her own body where her muscles had felt like dead jelly—fair, because they literally had been—and now nothing had even changed, except that their eyes were different colors, and that was all.

“Of course you didn’t,” Gideon said viciously. “Because you were so in control, because you could have done it all by yourself. I threw myself into a fucking bone so you could have your chance, and then what?”

“I didn’t ask you to,” Harrow said, jaw set. 

Gideon got up so swiftly that her head seemed to swim. Her hair had grown longer in the months she had been, what?, dead?, and the longer part of it was almost to her chin. Gross. All gross. Her body was back, but she didn’t even know how to be in it anymore, and her words were coming out of her mouth faster than she could control them.

“No, you _didn’t_ ask,” Gideon started, and it felt like an oncoming torrent, the hatch opening to whatever creature was about to crawl out of there. “Why do you think I threw myself before you asked? I knew you would have said no. I knew you would have wanted to control every single aspect of every single thing, because you’re a fucking psycopath who could not let anybody die without you getting the final word.”

Harrow opened her mouth, but Gideon shook her head and just like that, Harrow stopped.

“What the fuck is wrong with you? You were meant to renew the house,” Gideon said, her voice lower, a whisper, her lungs having a hard time adjusting to the explosion as her own eyes seemed to stare back at her. “You were meant to be the Emperor’s Hands, never mind that he’s a dick, you were meant for so much more. You were meant to live ten thousand years.”

“Fuck ten thousand years,” Harrow said, which was enough of an answer to what the fuck was wrong without even having to add the miserable thing she added later, which was, “I barely wanted to live one.”

“I thought you wanted to live forever.”

“Gideon, will you shut up and listen?” Harrow snapped finally, and the use of her name brought her back. “I didn’t want your sacrifice. I wanted _you_."

The words fell between them like a heavy silence. Gideon thought Harrow might take them back, or maybe knock her around the head so her brain would obliterate the sentence ever being spoken out loud.

Harrow did none of those things. She looked up to Gideon’s black eyes, and waited.

“Ok,” Gideon said. Then, “What.” Then, “What the hell am I supposed to do with that, Nonagesimus?”

“Whatever you want to,” Harrowhark said, which was the most un-Harrowhark thing to say, and thus Gideon wondered if they had managed to come out alive on the other side at all, if all of this was only a hallucination her brain had created to cope with the fact that she might be stuck with Harrow’s puny muscles for the next ten thousand years. 

Harrow made as if to turn her back, to walk out the door where everyone else would be waiting for them. Except Gideon wanted no such thing. That moment was hers, and hers alone, and she was going to claim it.

“No, you don’t—”

Gideon picked up her necromancer before she could move away. Gideon had known that lightness of arms by now, but it felt strange being back in her body, lifting her up with such ease, sweeping her up in her arms before the protests came. Weighted as much as bird bones, but this time, she didn't play dead. Every muscle in Harrowhark’s body was terse like a noose, her eyes sharp, bone studs covering her ears. She was dangerous, she was a full Lyctor, but as she watched, it was Harrow.

Just Harrow.

Barefaced, no paint covering her in white, her skin a little ashen, her midnight hair way too long and falling over her forehead; Gideon couldn’t bear to put scissors to it. Harrow, with those sharp yellow eyes Gideon had known only from looking into the mirror her whole life, and now looking back at her.

In the end, it had always been kind of a mirror.

Which was fucked up, but hey, there were worse ways of being fucked up.

“Put me down, you red-haired moron,” Harrow said.

“Maybe if you had done push-ups like I told you to, you could easily outmatch me. Ok, not easily. Still.”

Harrow slid the palm of her hand, resting across Gideon’s cheek. For a hot second, Gideon’s brain only thought of biting it to get it away; too many years of Ninth survival instincts kicking in at once. But Harrow’s fingers were surprisingly soft, and they touched her with such reverence that it was like she was about to break in half. So she did something even crazier, and turned her head slightly to kiss the palm of Harrow’s hand. Harrow let out the softest gasp, scrunching her little eyebrows together like she was about to attack something, but then her shoulders relaxed.

Gideon leaned her head forward, and the next kiss landed straight to Harrow’s lips. They were dry, and tasted of blood where she’d bitten them to get to the cuts, and it was nothing like Gideon imagined it would be. First because who the fuck would imagine kissing Harrowhark Nonagesimus, second, what the fuck was she doing, and third, Harrow was kissing her back. Harrow’s kiss wasn’t exactly good, but there was a hunger to it that Gideon only felt when Harrow bit her _own_ lip, drawing the blood between their mouths. She didn’t think that Harrow had a lot of practice in kissing but then again neither did Gideon—except for that one skeleton and that was one single extremely embarrassing time—and maybe she should stop thinking about bones, but then, she was, after all, kissing Harrowhark Nonagesimus.

Gideon broke away first, but because her lungs had expanded to a point where she wasn’t sure she could relearn how to breathe. She stood, open mouthed, still holding the fragile frame of Harrow in her arms.

“Nav,” Harrow said. “Griddle. Say something.”

“What the _hell_ , Harrow.”

“That does classify like saying something,” Harrow conceded, albeit reluctantly. She didn’t ask to be put down again, just looked quiet and contemplative and only mildly evil, which Gideon had to admit was doing wonders for her stomach, which seemed like it had decided to take three spins into the River to never come back.

“So all of this,” Gideon tried to gesture vaguely, then remembered she was still holding Harrow, and only gripped her tighter, fingers digging into the black fabric of her pants, finding the skin beneath, “all this for what, so you would not be beholden to what I did?”

“All of this,” Harrow indicated with a nod of her head, “because I told you before, Nav, and you didn’t listen. You were never good at listening, so I guess I had this one coming. But I could not conceive of a universe without you in it. So I refused to conceive it.”

Gideon blinked, brain struggling to catch up, having a million thoughts drop belatedly into her head with the heaviness of the door of the Locked Tomb. 

“Griddle, you are my only friend,” Harrow whispered. “If I only had to do one thing right, it was to let you live. If I had to do one thing right, if I had to break the Nine Houses to do it, I would do it. My soul was never any good without yours. I am two hundred sons and daughter of my House,” her voice cracked, just slightly, “and I refuse to be one more. I have no soul without you. I would not hold it back from you. I have been saving this one last dance.”

 _There is no me without you._ Gideon had said that before she jumped. She thought she did. It was a hazy memory. It felt true. It felt truer now, looking into each other's eyes. 

The last part of Nonagesimus’ didn’t even make sense, but when did she ever. It almost felt normal, Harrow muttering cryptic bullshit in her black-clad clothes and awe in her voice, Gideon half a step behind, and it felt only fair to pay back what Harrow had constantly complained about with her nonsense. 

Except this time cryptic bullshit could almost be heard as something akin to romance, a thought that both terrified her and made her insides melt. And the awe was meant solely for her.

In her most solemn and serious voice, Gideon Nav said, “Nonagesimus, are you asking me out?”

Harrow’s face contorted in disgust. “What? _No_. Why would I possibly do something like that?”

“You just said dance, Harrow. Is that what you’ve been dreaming of, the past few months? Oh, wait a moment, I can even see it, poor little recluse Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus waiting anxiously at the imperial ball to dance with Her Divine Highness—”

Harrow kissed her again, though Gideon was pretty sure that this time it was only to shut her up.

She didn’t mind.

She didn’t mind it a bit.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you once again to my girlfriend for revising this and i'm so sorry i can only talk about this now. title comes from Genesis 22: 1-19.


End file.
